Hongan Long
Postdoctoral Researcher
longhongan(at)gmail.com
(832) 573-1444
Ph.D., 2012, Biology, University of Houston
M.S., 2007, Marine Biology, Ocean University of China
B.S., 2004, Bioscience, Ocean University of China
I was a ciliate-centered researcher before joining the Lynch lab. After working on marine ciliates' morphology and taxonomy as an undergraduate researcher and M.S. student, I moved on to more conceptually ground topics on mutation accumulation using the model ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila in Becky Zufall's lab at University of Houston. T. thermophila provides a wonderful playground for mutations to accumulate in its germline genome and hide from selection. It also turns out this system could also be used to estimate other important population genetic parameters, besides the total deleterious mutation rate and fitness effects, lethal mutation rate and dominance coefficients. The estimates fell into the range of studied eukaryotic organisms.
My starting post-doc research will be involved in exploring the impact of the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) system on mutation accumulation. The study system uses Deinococcus radiodurans, the known organisms with the strongest resistance to radiation on the earth. More topics will be shown here in the future after I get more involved in a large grant on bacterial genome instability awarded to Michael Lynch, Pat Foster, Haixu Tang, and Steven Finkel.